Last 13-14th September, the “INNOVATION & RESEARCH IN THE E-WASTE RECYCLING CHAIN: IMPROVING CIRCULAR ECONOMY OF CRITICAL RAW MATERIALS” event took place in Aachen (Germany).

The aim of the event was to discuss the state of the art of e-waste recycling, looking at the entire recycling chain, from collection and logistics to sorting, pre-processing and materials recovery. The aim of the Matchmaking and Networking event was to have an overview of the current Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) activities from leading experts and facilitate dialogue which should lead to new proposal ideas for the next H2020 calls.

The first day, 3 parallel sessions were stablished. Logistics, Collection and Pre-Processing, Recycling and Recovery Technologies and CRM Compositions and Product Trends were treated separately by representatives from University and research organizations, industry and Policy and European experts. These sessions set the basis for the discussions which took place next day in the workshop session.

On 13 September, during the Session “Recycling and Recovery Technology”, the REE4EU project about the recovery of rare earths metals from EoL products was presented. IDENER’s role in this project is mainly the Multidisciplinary Design Optimisation of the whole recovery process.

A guided tour of the RWTH Aachen University facilities was also organized at the end of the event. In this tour, Department of Process Metallurgy and Metal Recycling (IME) and Department of Mineral Processing (AMR) were visited.